AB 1164: Don't protect the worst teachers

AP

(AP)

RAE BELISLE

Competition for success in the 21st-century economy is increasingly tied to an educated workforce with strong science, technology, engineering and math skills. Parents, community and business leaders, and policy makers trying to keep and grow jobs in California should be shocked that in just a few short years California has won the race to the bottom.

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), children in poverty in California public schools now perform below their fourth-grade peers in math in every other state and the District of Columbia. Over half of California’s K-12 students are in poverty, which makes our academic decline particularly alarming.

At the same time, the California Legislature is poised to pass a bill that would cement this decline by doing serious harm to the teaching profession. AB 1164 by Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, rewards our worst-performing teachers and puts them firmly on the path to lifetime employment.

If passed, AB 1164 would only allow new teachers with two years of consecutive unsatisfactory ratings — the lowest rating possible — another year in the classroom along with increased job guarantees. Other new staff who may have struggled but showed signs of promise, and earned higher ratings such as needing improvement, would not even be eligible for another year of probation.

Discouraging principals from releasing the least effective adults on probation makes no sense. Why give adults who have already proven they are failing our children an easier path to a guaranteed lifetime job? This will make things harder, especially for our most vulnerable students and the hard-working effective teachers and school leaders who are doing the difficult work every day to improve results in the most challenging classrooms.

Thurmond’s AB 1164 is the embodiment of back-room deals in Sacramento that sell out our children. To free up a legislative vehicle to help the worst teachers secure a job for life, Assemblyman Thurmond gutted and amended his bill to establish an emergency child care program for foster care children to help stabilize families at the time of placement.

California is facing a severe teacher shortage, with three-quarters of school districts reporting shortages and even greater rates in high-poverty schools. But there is no research or evidence that the teacher shortage would be fixed by rewarding the most unsuccessful adults in our classrooms with another year of employment.

Focusing limited public education resources on the absolute lowest-performing probationary teachers will never be successful at scale or be hailed as the cutting-edge “California Way” to increase academic achievement. It will certainly do nothing to help bring new or keep great teachers in our classrooms, or encourage employers to stay or expand in California.

There are surely better ways to honor young people and attract career changers who want to enter the teaching profession. We can support them to become excellent and encourage them to stay in the high-poverty classrooms that need them the most. There are certainly struggling teachers who need help to become great teachers. But those teacher candidates are not the ones at the very bottom with consecutive years of unsatisfactory performance who would be newly protected by AB 1164.

Rather than spend tens of millions to attempt to rehabilitate the least competent adults, a fraction of that funding could be spent to counsel them into a career change to do something more suitable to their skills. The bulk of any new resources should be invested in supporting our students and the promising new teachers and those with demonstrated effectiveness in serving in challenging assignments and commitment to making teaching a career.

Rewarding failing teachers who are still on probation with another year of employment and new rights to challenge a local decision by the school principal to not employ them for life will demoralize hard-working teachers and school leaders and worsen the teacher shortage, harming the very children who need California’s best teachers the most.

Let’s work together and encourage the Legislature to support students and the effective teachers in our public schools by contacting our state representatives while they’re home on summer recess. Let’s tell them not to cave in to special interests in Sacramento and reject AB 1164.

Belisle is a former member of the California State Board of Education.